


Lilies Grow on the Bottom of the Sea

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Celtic Mythology, English and Scottish Popular Ballads - Francis James Child, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Ballads, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, F/M, Fairytale Motifs, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Magic Realism, Marriage, Sibling Incest, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-25 23:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/959130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lover goes away to sea but promises to return in seven years. A marriage is sorely tested. Choices in fairytales are usually irrevocable – but what if more than one person gets to choose?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Wife’s Secret

**Author's Note:**

> Fusion between ASOIAF and a whole bunch of (mostly) water-related myths, ballads, folktales and fairytales. I intentionally avoided the most famous ones (no wee mermaids or amphibian princes here), and will list the sources from which I borrowed/cribbed at the end of every chapter. Yup, this is a multi-chapter fic! :-) 
> 
> Do not expect this to cleave to the ASOIAF canon too closely, as I am more interested in playing with folkloric motifs and gender roles, and exploring issues of trust and loyalty which grow inside the Jaime-Cersei-Brienne triangle like succulents in a hydroponic garden. The title is from one of the variations of “The Daemon Lover,” # 243 in the _Child Ballads_ and one of the main sources for this fic. I own nothing.

Once upon a time, a rich man named Tywin lived in a great house by the sea. 

He called his house a castle and likened himself to a lion, but all that did was make him so widely disliked that no one, rich or poor, in that duchy or the next, would allow Tywin to court their daughters. The lion’s heart, never soft to begin with, hardened against his fellow men and their womenfolk. 

One day, while hunting in the forest, Tywin’s hounds found a hidden pool. He saw a beautiful woman bathing in it. She had hair tawny as a lion’s mane and eyes the green of spring leaves. Her name was Joanna, and she was unashamed before his scrutiny, completely free in her naked skin. 

She had no money or lands, but she was mercifully free of meddlesome male relatives. So Tywin asked for her hand in marriage, and she accepted. 

Her one condition was that Tywin must not enter her chamber on one day of the week. Amused by a woman’s fancies and eager to wed her, Tywin accepted. 

For seven years they were happy. Joanna bore Tywin two children. Twins, a boy and a girl. They had their mother’s wild beauty, their father’s proud temper, and were much loved and coddled. 

But a doubt kept gnawing on Tywin’s heart. He did not meet or care for many people outside of his family, and so did not understand that contentment in marriage and still feeling love for his wife after seven years were not gifts to be put aside lightly. He kept wondering what his wife did on the one day every week she spent shut up in her chamber. 

One day he could bear the gnawing feeling in his chest no more. He found his wife’s door unlocked and, not pausing to consider what this meant, he marched right through it. 

Joanna was bathing, as she had been when Tywin first saw her in the forest. Unlike that auspicious day, he now saw that she had, not the long, white legs of a woman, but the coiling, scaly tail of a snake. 

“I trusted you,” Joanna said sadly. “You broke my trust. Now I must leave.” 

“Yes, leave,” Tywin replied, “or I shall chop you into pieces and feed you to the dogs. Devil. Whore. Liar.”

Salt water and sweet mingling on her skin and scales, Joanna wept, but she did not plead. “You will miss me.”

Tywin did not understand that she was not the one who should be pleading. “I have already forgotten you.”

Joanna vanished from the great house that day. Tywin made of his heart a stone that nothing could ever gnaw on again, and forbade the servants to speak her name to his children. But servants loved to gossip. The cook described Joanna’s green, scaly, serpent’s tail in lurid detail, but the children’s old nurse thought that story too unsavory, and so told the twins that their mother had had, not the tail of a snake, but that of a fish. 

The boy, Jaime, did not care either way. The only animals he was interested in had four legs and could be ridden or chased with hunting horn and spear. All Jaime understood was that his mother was gone, and that his father’s hard heart was to blame. 

The girl, Cersei, cared very much. She thought her nurse a foolish old woman. Lions disdained even to eat fish, let alone mate with them. Cersei agreed with her brother that their mother’s disappearance was their father’s fault. She decided that, if she could not be a lion, she would rather be a snake than a fish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, that’s scene-setting out of the way. No Tyrion in this AU, sorry! But never fear, gentle reader, the twins take center stage in the next chapter, and Brienne follows soon after. ;-) This chapter is based on the medieval French-German legend of Melusine.


	2. The Twins

As they grew to maturity under their father’s cold roof, the twins learned to become everything to each other. 

Since their father thought other children unfit companions for them, they were left to mold and shape themselves so as to fit each other perfectly. Once coddled and spoiled, after Tywin broke Joanna’s trust they were neglected, had to tend each other like saplings in a dark forest. 

One birth, one life, one great loss should have made them one person. Or so they thought, lonely children caught on the cusp between innocence and corruption. But the hole left by their mother’s vanishing remained, both tying them together and keeping them apart. 

They grew and discovered how their bodies fit and filled each other, making them briefly whole, but the voids they both carried in their hearts could not so easily overlap and be extinguished. 

Tywin thought that two proud young lions grew in his house, but Jaime and Cersei were more akin to two lame beggars who lean on each other, and so can imitate how one healthy person walks. 

To anyone who did not look too closely, they seemed golden. Their gilt was of different shades. 

Jaime took from his mother her love of the sun and the forest, where one could run and then doze off in a warm place, like a great lizard, fascinating yet self-evident. 

Cersei inherited her mother’s fondness for bodies of water and her ease with secrets. She may not have had a hidden serpent’s tail, but she was not content. The sea called to her. 

“Don’t go,” Jaime pleaded. “I cannot be without you.” Even more than most young men in love, he was convinced this was so. 

Cersei smiled with rare contentment as they stood by the ship which would carry her away. She had told her father nothing. 

“I will come back,” she promised. “In seven years, I will come back and take you away with me. I will have a golden ship with silk sails and seventeen sailors to man it. We will be free at last.”

Although he called her his mirror image, his other self, Jaime could not find the words to sway her. He had always known his sister would slip away, flow through his fingers, slither away between his legs, but as long as she had called herself his, his lover, his twin, his own, he had not cared. 

She sailed away, and he remained behind, to wait for her.

The seven years were hard on him. He learned true aloneness, but he also discovered that being without Cersei was not as impossible as he had believed. He went hunting and drinking in village taverns, and took no woman to his bed. As the end of the seventh year approached, days went by when he only thought of his golden twin while walking by the sea, watching for ships etched against the setting sun. 

When seven years elapsed and she did not return, a part of him was wounded, but not surprised. 

Another six years passed. Jaime dwelt alone in his father’s house, which he never took to calling a castle, even after Tywin’s death. He told himself he was staying true to Cersei, but in truth he had learned to do without. He was an old lion before his time, brooding in his great house and walking by the sea for lack of something better to do. 

It was on the beach one evening that he found an unexpected treasure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I decided to combine elements of “The Daemon Lover” ballad (its several variations) with some variations on the twins’ canonical relationship. Because why not? :-) Next chapter, Brienne!


	3. The Blacksmith

In was an evening when the sky turned orange, the sea purple and green, and fishermen came back with tales of finned beauties captured in their nets. 

Jaime did not find a mermaid on the beach. He found a woman taller and broader than any he had ever seen, and uglier, too. She was staring at the sea as though she suspected it of plotting a particularly high tide to carry her away. Yet on hearing him approach, she turned on him eyes which seemed to have drunk up all of the blue from the ocean. 

He had been thinking of Cersei when he happened upon this giantess. The contrast between the gilded beauty of his memories and the solid ugliness of the woman before his eyes drew a laugh out of him, sending a flush of scarlet across the large woman’s face. She gave him a look that should by rights have turned him to stone, then walked hurriedly away, deaf to his jests and barbs. 

Servants’ gossip informed him that the woman from the beach was named Brienne, and was a blacksmith newly arrived in the duchy. She had never lived so close to the sea before, but by all accounts she made excellent kettles and armor. 

Jaime went to her smithy, telling himself it was something to do while he waited for his golden lover to return. Brienne refused to speak to him until he ordered a full suit of armor. Then she only spoke of styles and prices. 

He did not need armor. He simply wanted to see what the giantess would do. Within two weeks, the armor was ready. It bore a gilded lion on the breastplate, and was quite the best work in at least three duchies. 

Jaime next ordered a sword, certain that Brienne would not know how to make one. Soon he had it in hand, the pommel shaped like a lion’s head with snarling jaws. 

“I shall go and slay a monster for you, shall I?” he teased the silent blacksmith. “Maybe that will make you smile.”

He went in search of monsters, but all he found was a big brown bear which nearly took his arm off when he lured it out of its cave. He brought back its head for Brienne, but she looked at him as though her armor had robbed him of his wits. 

“What would I do with _that_?” she asked, aghast. 

“I thought flowers and silk dresses would make poor wooing presents for you,” Jaime spat out, surprising them both into silence. 

“It is a poor love which requires such proof,” Brienne said eventually. Then added, blushing warmly in her leather apron, much more warmly than the heat inside the smithy warranted: “Perhaps you would like to sit and help me work the bellows.” 

So he did, and soon discovered that while no amount of watching improved her looks, she did have the most endearingly toothy smile, when she chose to show it, and her eyes always spoke of clear skies and calm seas. The hole in his heart felt smaller when she was around. He felt almost whole for far longer than he ever had in his sister’s arms. 

He had to ask for Brienne’s hand in marriage three – or maybe two – times. 

The first time was with the aid of the bear’s head. She insisted that was no true proposal, but Jaime teased that she was holding out for a dragon’s head.

The second time, he was in his cups and told her in great detail how she differed from his sister, so Brienne left him in his servants’ care and walked away, red with anger and embarrassment. 

The third time, his head was still pounding with wine but his mind and eyes were clear when he kissed her in the smithy, and she blushed an unprecedented shade of pink. Astonished and perhaps wondering if he would ever muster the courage to kiss her again if she said no that time, she accepted. 

She demanded that he allow her one day a week to herself, to spend as she chose, and ask for no accounts thereof. A chill of foreboding passed through Jaime, but he told himself he was not his father. He wanted very much to be wedded and bedding the tall blacksmith, so he consented. 

Some months after their wedding, two times seven years elapsed since Cersei went to sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, I made Brienne a landlubber. So, not that many aquatic elements in this chapter (except the confirmation that there are indeed no mermaids in this story), but I hope J/B make up for it. :-P


	4. Promises

Jaime guessed his wife’s secret soon after they were married. 

Had he been a jealous man, he would have assumed that Brienne slipped away to meet a lover, came back to him sweaty and flushed from this phantom’s arms. But when he came to the smithy once during her day away from him, and found that she had taken the old sword that stood propped in a corner by the door and occasionally served as an emergency hatstand, he delighted in Brienne’s honesty and artlessness. 

So it was with no malice or worm gnawing at his heart that he fetched the lion-pommel sword she had made for him, and followed her when another week elapsed. 

He found Brienne in a clearing in the forest, by a pool of still, clear water, practicing her en gardes and ripostes with only a willow sapling as her sadly lacking opponent. 

“I knew you were lying,” he said cheerfully as he walked out of the trees, swinging his sword. “You told me at our wedding you cannot dance, yet here you are.” He offered her a bow and a swordsman’s salute. “May I have this dance, if the willow will allow me the pleasure of partnering you?”

He smiled and waited, and waited and smiled. Brienne’s blue eyes grew dark, black clouds boiling in the sky before a summer storm. 

“You promised,” she said in a voice like stone breaking. “I trusted you.”

Jaime’s smile faltered. This was something to share, something precious. He was not his father. “Brienne,” he said, reached out to touch her. “Sweetheart.”

She turned away. “Please leave. Leave me alone,” she said, her broad back to him, an echo of herself. 

Jaime wavered, hoping she would turn back and look at him, but all he saw was his own reflection in the still water of the pool. A beautiful, foolish man who could not tell the difference between the essential and the frivolous. 

He walked away from the clearing, out of the forest, his sword forgotten, dropped somewhere in the brush. 

He walked down to the beach and along the water’s edge, until he saw a ship which shone like gold. It had silk sails and was manned by seventeen sailors. 

Cersei stood on the sand, her hair spun gold, her eyes and mouth and dimples just as Jaime remembered. 

“Well met, brother,” she greeted him, as though no time at all had flowed between them. 

“You said seven years,” Jaime said, his heart heavy as a rock, hollow as a bone. “It has been twice as long.”

She frowned, she smiled. “What does it matter? I needed more time, and now I am come for you. I could have had a king’s son for my husband, but I forsook him and came back for you. As I promised I would.”

“If you forsook a king’s son, that is nothing to do with me. You are seven years, fourteen years too late, Cersei. I am married now. She is a good woman. She loves me. I love her.” His heart would barely let him speak as he remembered Brienne’s back, immovable as a mountain. She would never forgive him. He was worse than his father.

Cersei laughed like waves crashing, like seagulls crying. “Jaime.” She said his name as she had used to do, the way a serpent hisses that you should come closer and she will whisper a secret in your ear. “What matters this woman? We can be free. Come and kiss me, and then let us away.”

He came to her, telling himself he would kiss her and leave her, show her she had no more power over him. But the memory of Brienne’s back, of her fists squeezed by her sides, of her voice telling him to leave, shadowed his footsteps across the sand. Cersei’s lips were as soft and warm as they had always been. 

“Where would we go?” Jaime asked, feeling drunk, knowing he was not.

She smiled. He was hers, as he had always been. “Not to the bright hill of heaven,” she said, “for they would not want us there. And not to the dark hill of hell, for we would not want to go there. I will show you where lilies bloom on the bottom of the sea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Daemon Lover returns! Also, the Greek myth of Narcissus and Echo.


	5. Choices

Brienne missed him.

She had been glad when Jaime did not return home the night after he had come to her in the forest, as though breaking a solemn promise were nothing. The cornerstone of their marriage, a jest for a summer’s day. But when one, then two, then three days and nights elapsed, she grew uneasy. Jaime’s sword was found in the forest, but no news of brigands setting upon a golden-haired traveler were heard, no bodies washed up on the beach. As the days strung themselves together like prayer beads, Brienne’s anger and sense of betrayal turned to worry, then to a different kind of anger.

She missed Jaime’s hands and his mouth, his sudden bouts of passion and unexpected ability to soothe her when her soul turned dark. She was furious with him for not allowing her to keep this one thing to herself. She never doubted his skill with a sword or that he would have sparred with her gladly. She had wanted to keep a part of herself separate, to remind herself of who she had been before she knew him, but he had not allowed it. 

Brienne reflected that Jaime’s mother made a very grave mistake all those years ago. She should not have slunk away like a kicked cur in the face of Tywin’s faithlessness. No, Brienne thought angrily, Joanna should have set Tywin’s hounds on him for violating her, let them tear him apart like a stag. Should have turned him into a stag the moment he spied her naked in the forest, stayed safe in her watery sanctuary, and saved herself from heartbreak. Saved Brienne from heartbreak. Prevented Jaime from ever being born.

Brienne missed him. Raged against him for vanishing without a trace, as though he were the one who had been wronged, as though he had woken up next to an ogre when he thought he had married a princess. Missed him. 

When her thoughts threatened to drive her mad like mice in the wainscoting, scratching and scrabbling through the night, Brienne went to consult the woman they called The Frog. 

This elderly, malodorous person dwelt in an isolated cottage, telling fortunes and selling love remedies. Potions to secure love, potions to destroy its fruits. Brienne needed neither, but solid advice. 

The Frog laughed to hear Brienne’s request. “You do not need my advice, daughter, only to hear yourself think. Tell me your story.” 

Brienne did. Even the part Jaime had not known, about the life growing under her heart, heavy with her sorrow and hope. 

The Frog stirred something sweet-smelling in her witch’s pot. Something to lend courage to a frightened heart, something to lighten the burden of worry. 

“I can tell you where he is,” she said. “But the road there will not be easy for you. Is it worth it, to find a foolish man who broke your trust and abandoned you to run off with his golden twin?” Brienne winced. “And if he did come back to you,” The Frog continued, “what then?”

Brienne thought this over. “I will never know, unless I find him. Once I have found him, then I will decide what to do.”

The Frog chuckled, a sound like twigs snapping and snails’ shells popping. “You already have, daughter. Choices are made on a breath, in the beat between two strikes of your heart.” 

She told Brienne how she would find Jaime, and what to bring, and what to do if he did come back with her. Sending Brienne on her way, The Frog shook her head, not unkindly, at the precious folly of women in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maggy the Frog, Plot Propeller Extraordinaire, strikes again! The Greek myth of Actaeon and Artemis informed Brienne’s thoughts on Jaime’s parents’ marriage. More water is coming next chapter. :-)


	6. The Drowning Man

Lilies did indeed bloom on the bottom of the sea, but this meant little to Jaime, who needed air to survive. 

Wrapped in his sister’s arms, drunk on her skin and mouth, Jaime refused to think himself her captive. Although the cave deep under the sea where they lay had no discernible way in or out. Although he could no longer tell if time passed at all. Although he had made foolish, irrevocable choices that day on the beach, in the forest clearing, following his wife as she set out from home. 

He had once thought he needed Cersei to live. He was learning, all over again, lessons which had come to him over nearly fourteen years, slow and numbing as leprosy. 

Despite Cersei’s skin, her legs, the saltiness and muskiness of her, he could not help thinking of Brienne. Could not help comparing her to Cersei, and finding that no duality he came up with quite fit either woman. 

Light and darkness. 

Beauty and ugliness. 

Life and dream. 

Gold and blue. 

One of them bright yet cruel and as cold as a fish, the other warm yet ungainly, stolid, quotidian. 

_He lay with Cersei in the highest tower of his father’s house, listening to the sea boom and surge far below. A voice he recognized as Brienne’s spoke to him: “Jaime, get up and come away. The water is rising, it is in the kitchens, the sea is flooding the cellars and the great hall. Get up now or you die.”_

_He did not care to save himself so much. He kept embracing Cersei._

_Brienne’s voice spoke again: “Jaime, the water is in your father’s study, it is washing away the cobwebs in your mother’s locked chamber, it is climbing the stairs. Get up now or the servants, the villagers, the entire duchy dies.”_

_Cersei was kissing him, and he did not respond. What cared he if the world entire drowned?_

_Brienne spoke into his ear, her voice calm, warm as touch: “Jaime, the sea is lapping under the door, it is seeping to this bed, it is soaking the covers. Get up now or_ we _die.”_

He awoke to find himself in an underwater cave without an entrance, Cersei asleep beside him, heavy as gold bars. He was certain he could not breathe. 

“Brienne,” he whispered, an invocation, an apology, a true telling. “Brienne, I can survive here without you. But I cannot live without you. Come and find me, love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jaime’s dream owes everything to “The Drowned City,” a faux-Victorian poem written by A. S. Byatt for her novel _Possession_ , and based on the Breton legend of the submerged City of Ys. That, and GRRM’s love of making Jaime’s dreams ridiculously Freudian. :-P


	7. The Ordeal

In stories told on a winter’s night, it was customary for the woman abandoned and maligned by her lover to face three challenges in order to regain his love, suffering various indignities along the way. 

Brienne was not an easy woman to humiliate or deter, and she was not seeking Jaime’s love. She already had that, she knew, despite his betrayal, his vanishing. She had to find him so that he could find his way back to her, if he so chose. 

The first challenge waited for her on the beach. A pile of lentils as high as her waist, all mixed up with sand and pebbles. She had until sundown to separate the lentils from the rest. 

No helpful colony of ants appeared to help the distressed maiden. Brienne was no maiden, and she had ten healthy fingers and a mule’s will. She was done well before sundown, the pile of lentils now only as high as her knee, the sand and pebbles already reverting to the beach to which they belonged. 

Her reward was that a path opened up for her from the beach to the foot of a distant headland, where she faced her second challenge: to find the scales of a very rare nocturnal fish which changed color like an opal in the moonlight. 

In the short time she had spent living by the sea, Brienne had not learned to swim. There was no moon out that night, and the rocks of the headland were slippery and sharp. She had with her the three objects The Frog had advised her to bring – the bear skull, boiled clean of meat, the armor she had made for Jaime, and the lion-pommel sword – but could not make a fishing line from them. She despaired of finding, let alone catching the elusive fish, when she remembered the great storm which had battered the shore not two nights earlier. 

Brienne started a small fire well away from the water, then crawled on one hand and her knees along the rocks, holding up a torch in her other hand. It was profoundly undignified and hard on her palms and knees, but it was necessary, and the night was dark and empty of prying eyes. 

By the light of the torch, she spotted the iridescent glimmer of scales from fish which the storm had dashed upon the rocks, and gathered a handful. 

As the sun rose, the path to her third challenge opened. It took her to the top of the headland, where the wind howled and the waves gnashed like hungry teeth, gnawing at the rock. There, Brienne found a plain drinking cup. She had until midnight to decant the whole sea using that cup. 

Why would the path bring her to the top of the headland if the challenge required her to stay close to the water, she wondered, staring dazedly at the empty cup, smaller than her hand. 

Brienne looked over the edge of the headland and saw the underwater cave, deep down beneath the crystal-clear sea at dawn. 

She knew this was a true choice to test her, but also a trick. She accepted the challenge. Laying aside the cup, she put on Jaime’s armor and strapped on his sword. Then, gripping the bear skull under her arm, she jumped off the headland.

Weighed down as she was, Brienne sank like a stone. Down and down she went, past fish and other creatures that swim where no human could be, past the trailing tendrils of blooming lilies, until her feet met solid rock, and she found she need not hold her breath any longer. 

She was in the cave, salt water dripping from her hair, her hands, her armor. It pooled on the floor around her, dripped off the point of Jaime’s sword, drained from the bottom of the bear skull. 

Brienne was not crying. Her eyes and mind were clear when she saw Jaime, smiling at her as though she were the sun peeking over the horizon, and his sister, a look like thunder on her beautiful face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brienne performs variations on the three tests Psyche had to go through in order to win back Cupid in the Greek myth. Of course, Psyche was your typical distressed damsel who couldn’t tie her shoes without a benevolent deus ex machina coming along to help her…


	8. Proof of Love

Brienne did not speak.

There were so many things she wanted to say to Jaime. So many things he needed to hear, deserved to hear. _I love you, come back to me. You are a selfish bastard, and you do not deserve me. You are my husband, my lover, I am carrying your child, you should choose me. I do not trust you like I did before, but I will try to forgive you. You ran back to her, but you smiled when you saw me. I love you. I love you. I love you. Come back to me._

She stood there, in a pool of sea water, dressed in his armor, with the bear skull under her arm, like a character in a mummery. A bumbling knight. A deluded woman. Looking at Jaime, her face immobile as the headland from which she had jumped to get to him. She would not make the choice easy for him. Could not. She would not use guilt or love or the wiles his sister had used to sway him. The choice would be his and his alone. 

“Jaime,” Cersei spoke. “Tell this beast to swim back to the surface, if she can. You are mine, and I am yours. It has always been so.” She sounded so confident, secure in her underwater cave, her domain. 

Still Brienne did not speak or smile or frown, but only looked at Jaime. He took her in, all of her, her face, her eyes, her blacksmith’s hands, the armor she had made, the bear skull. The water dripping down her collar, pooling around her feet. 

“You were supposed to remain true to me,” Cersei said, agitation creeping into her voice, into her soft hands. “But I forgive you. You chose _me_. Tell her to leave.”

Jaime never took his eyes off Brienne. “It can be a real burden, belonging to someone, especially when they become little more than a shade on your memory,” he said. “And it can be a real burden, living with someone who is so _good_ , who has the power to forgive you.”

Brienne winced, hunched her shoulders, squeezed the bear skull desperately with both hands. If she let it go, she was certain she could no longer breathe, the sea would rush in and claim her. She could not look as Jaime turned to his sister, could not stand to see her smile. 

“I did choose, Cersei,” he said. “And then I chose again.” 

Brienne looked up. Jaime was looking at her, the warmth of summer days and winter nights in his eyes. “Now I choose a third time. If you will have me.” He smiled at his wife. “ _Brienne._ ” Her name like honey on his tongue. “You can’t swim,” he added. 

“No.” The word was little more than a breath on Brienne’s lips. 

He came to her then, took the hand that was not holding the bear skull, squeezed her chilled fingers, scraped raw on rocks and lentils. After a moment, she squeezed back. 

“You will come back to me, Jaime,” Cersei mocked. “I will call to you, and you will not be able to resist. Maybe I will give you seven whole years, since you resented those extra seven I took for myself so much. Then I will call you, skin to skin, and you will sail away with me again.”

Brienne looked over her shoulder at the beautiful woman, and saw how alone she was, and how unused to it. Cersei knew how to get her way only through beauty, power, magic. The knowledge of her aloneness had not even reached her yet. When it did, it would likely drown her. 

Brienne’s words of anger turned to pity in her mouth. “Your mother would be ashamed of you,” she said. 

Cersei flinched and hissed, but Jaime and Brienne were already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In addition to Melusine and, oh, every story involving the Power of Threes ever, this chapter draws obliquely on the Celtic legend of selkies. One more chapter to go!


	9. Ever After

They emerged on the beach, squelched up the sand in their waterlogged clothes and rusting armor. 

Brienne trudged along, two paces ahead of Jaime, keeping her head down, not looking back. Fearful that if she checked whether he was following, she would find him sinking back beneath the waves, into his sister’s arms. 

“That armor is ruined, you know,” Jaime said with forced cheer. “What ever possessed you to jump into the sea while wearing it?”

Brienne whirled on him, and he fell back a step, his customary grin wavering when he saw her face. He drew breath to speak, but she forestalled him with a raised hand. 

“I do not want your words,” she said quietly. “If you want to explain yourself, if you want to apologize, you will have to actually _do_.”

She put down the bear skull and the sword, and started to strip off the armor. Jaime’s eyes went wide with surprise, then glittered with lust, then narrowed in confusion, as she took it off, piece by piece, not meeting his eyes. When the armor was piled between them, Brienne stepped back, and gestured as The Frog had taught her. 

The armor grew into a wild and nearly impassable mountain between them. It took Jaime the better part of a week to make his way over it, nearly falling down ravines, avoiding rockslides and hungry beasts. 

When finally he came down the mountain, several days’ worth of stubble on his chin and his clothes in tatters, Brienne was waiting for him with the bear skull upended in her hands, full of water. 

She poured the water onto the ground, where it transformed into a very large, very cold lake. By the time Jaime reached the other shore, he was wet through, shivering and blue-lipped, and cursing his wife’s stubbornness as well as his own. 

Brienne had his sword at the ready, as though about to drive it, point-first, into the earth.

Jaime rushed forward before she could do so, grabbed the blade with his bare hand. 

Brienne gasped, tried to pull the sword back, then tried to drop it. Jaime winced and muttered in pain in response to her every move, but did not let go. They struggled, a graceless dance, a battle performed by traveling players. 

Finally the sword lay, inert and only itself, on the blood-spattered grass, and Jaime’s hand was wrapped in the torn hem of Brienne’s shirt. She had her arm around his shoulders and her fingers in his hair, called him unflattering names in a voice high with panic and relief. 

“Brienne,” he interrupted, teeth chattering. “Remember that it is a poor love which requires so much proof.” 

Brienne bit her lip to stop the stream of words pouring out of her, shook her head, her nose brushing his ear. “That is not enough,” she whispered.

Jaime sighed. “I know. But it’s something to begin with.”

They went back to Jaime’s house and set about preparing it for the birth of their child: aired out rooms not used in decades, shut up others filled with bad memories. Jaime often hinted that, once the child was born, sparring would be the best way to get Brienne’s strength back, and more enjoyable than banging on her anvil. Not quite as enjoyable as other kinds of banging, of course, but still. She refused to either smile or scowl at this, would give him nothing stronger than a maybe. 

Brienne would not keep Jaime tethered to their front door like a goat, in case his sister ever did decide to call to him. She might never trust him completely again, she knew, and labored under that knowledge as she did under her advancing pregnancy. 

Yet every day Jaime chose her, again and again. 

And so every day, as the child grew and his hand healed, as metal sang, as sun and moon played tug of war with the tides, Brienne slowly learned to trust him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because in a story based on threes, with three times three chapters, there must be three final challenges with a twist. Also, bits of the myth of Orpheus and of _The Odyssey_.


End file.
